According to Gauchet we are living in a ‘society of individuals’ that has lost the political from view. Therefore, thus reads Gauchet’s diagnosis, contemporary society is haunted by a kind of individualism out of which no society can be conceived. The aim of this paper is to elaborate this diagnosis, and more specifically the idea that there is no society, and therefore no individual either, without the political. Furthermore, it will assess Gauchet’s diagnosis by fathoming in what sense contemporary individualism, besides being an ‘eclipse of the political’, is also a threat to democracy.